Quote Of The Day: Taye Diggs Says “When I Saw Tyson Beckford Hailed As This Beautiful Man, That Caused A Shift In My Being!”

Whoa there Taye Taye! It’s not what you were thinking though. Taye Diggs says he credits Tyson Beckford’s success for helping him love his own dark complexion. Diggs made this revelation in a recent interview with MyBrownBaby.com about his children’s book “Chocolate Me!”

Check out some excerpts below:

MYBROWNBABY: The scenes in the book, especially early on in the book, sound pretty brutal. When did you feel like your self-esteem had recovered from all of those early experiences?

TAYE DIGGS:

When I got into high school I started to hear, just from the black community, everybody is more attracted to the light skin girls and the light skin dudes with the light eyes. And from within the race the light skin black people and lighter brown people would make fun of the darker people. So then it was a completely different kind of struggle. And then funnily enough it was when dark skinned men, and this was just from my perspective, there seemed to be a shift where all of a sudden we saw Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Tyson Beckford. I’m still trying to figure out how this came to be. For me, when I saw Tyson Beckford hailed as this beautiful man by all people, that caused a shift in my being. And I remember literally waking up and walking the streets feeling a little bit more proud. And then after the movie “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” when I had my own personal moments of weakness, I just had to remind myself of all the people that really enjoyed that movie and just kind of lean on that.

TAYE ON COLORISM:

At five-years-old, none of us knew the can of worms we were opening… the little white kids who were making fun of me, they didn’t know. Their whole questioning was coming from the fact that I was different. None of them ever used the N word or negro. They just knew, “ok, his skin is brown, my skin is white, his skin is white, his skin is white, let’s make fun of him.” It wasn’t even in a nasty way at 5. But I obviously didn’t take it well. And then the older you get, once that understanding came, then that was a whole different issue. Then you have to deal with serious self-reflection. My mother was very fair skin and my dad was dark. And back in my mother’s day, she was seeking out the dark men because she didn’t feel black enough. So it’s a continuing issue. We’ve come a long way, but I don’t think we’re fully over it as a society.